The present invention relates to control data generation devices which detect an operating position of an operation member, employed in an audio mixer apparatus or control equipment and capable of both manual operation and automatic operation, to generate control data corresponding to the detected operating position, and more particularly to a control data generation device which can generate control data, causing no odd feeling, by effectively eliminating a positioning error, produced at the time of automatic operation of an operation member, in response to manual operation of the operation member performed immediately after the automatic operation.
In audio mixer apparatus, there are provided faders (sliding-type operation members) manually operable by a human operator for adjusting/setting levels, frequency characteristics, etc. of audio signals to be mixed or audio signals to be output. Among various types of faders is one constructed as an electric fader capable of both manual operation and automatic operation, and examples of such electric faders are disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 2684808 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication No. 2004-178395.
In view of the facts that there is considerable variation (or discrepancy) in position-vs.-output characteristic among position sensors attached to individual faders (i.e., sensor-specific errors) and there are also installation errors of the position sensors relative to fader structures (variation in installation error among the faders), the No. 2004-178395 publication discloses performing calibration of the position detection data for each of the faders to standardize between index positions (operating positions) of the faders and position detection data of the position sensors attached to the faders, in order to eliminate or absorb the above-mentioned errors or variation. With such an arrangement, every fader can be standardized in such a manner that position detection data of a same value can be generated as position detection data corresponding to a same index position (operating position).
Further, in order to address the problem of the traditional technique that, when a fader is to be automatically positioned at a desired position, there would occur a difference between actual position detection data provided from a position sensor in correspondence with an index position ( ) corresponding to the target position and data given as the target position (i.e., target position data) due to the above-mentioned sensor-specific errors, installation errors, etc., the No. 2004-178395 publication discloses a technique of converting the target position data in such a manner that it indicates an actual position detection data value corresponding to an index position that corresponds to the target position data. By positioning the fader in accordance with the thus-converted target position data, the disclosed technique can achieve automatic fader positioning with the above-mentioned sensor-specific errors and installation errors appropriately compensated for.
Further, in general, a difference exists between inherent positioning precision of an automatic positioning mechanism that automatically positions a fader through driving of a motor and inherent position detecting precision of a position sensor. Particularly, in recent years, an encoder is employed as the position sensor to increase the position detecting precision of the sensor, and thus, the positioning precision of the automatic positioning mechanism tends to be coarser or lower than the position detecting precision of the position sensor. In the case where the position detecting precision of the position sensor is finer or higher than that of the automatic positioning mechanism, the following problems would arise. Namely, even when the automatic positioning mechanism has positioned a fader accurately relative to a target position within its positioning precision, it would be detected that the fader has been positioned slightly deviated from the target position in terms of the positioning precision level of the automatic positioning mechanism. In such a case, when the fader is manually operated immediately after automatically positioned, a value slightly deviated from the target position that is an original initial value would be undesirably output as an initial value of fader operating position detection data in response to the manual operation. If, for example, the automatic positioning mechanism has positioned a fader at a position of −9.98 dB with an error of 0.02 dB from a target position of −10 dB, then the position sensor may accurately detect the position of the fader containing such an error to thereby output position detection data of −9.98 dB. In such a case, if a human operator moves the fader from the automatically positioned target position of −10 dB toward a −11 dB position, then the actual fader output value will change from the −9.98 dB position through the −10 dB position toward the −11 dB position. Namely, although the initial value of the manual operation should be the target position value −10 dB, the actual fader output value would start at −9.98 dB that is different from −10 dB. In this case, predetermined control, such as level adjustment, would be undesirably performed on an audio signal on the basis of such position detection data in a slightly inaccurate manner. Thus, for example, the human operator would be given an odd feeling.
Thus, the aforementioned prior art technique can not drastically solve the error problem arising from the inherent positioning precision of the automatic positioning mechanism. In order to avoid the problem, there is no other way but to set the position detecting precision of the position sensor to be coarser or lower than the positioning precision of the automatic positioning mechanism. However, if the position detecting precision of the position sensor is so set, an operating position of the operation member can be detected only with a coarse or low resolution even though the position sensor of a high resolution is employed, which presents the problem that effective and efficient utilization of the resource can not be achieved.